Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder by Louv, Richard (the two towers ebook .txt) 📕

with it, it’s your house.” He made no mention of the senses, saw or understood no complexity. I admired his honesty.

Yet other young people, when prompted, did describe how experiences in nature excited their senses. For example, one boy recalled his sensory experience when camping, “the red and orange flames dancing in the darkness, the smoky fumes rising up, burning my eyes and nostrils. . . .”

The experience of irrepressible Jared Grano, a ninth-grader whose father is a middle-school principal, sends a positive message to parents who worry that they might be alienating their kids from nature by taking them on the sometimes-dreaded family vacation. He complained that, although vacations are supposed to be for getting away from it all, “Unfortunately, I had to take them all with me! My parents, younger brother, and younger sister would all be traveling with me in an oven on wheels for over a week. The Grand Canyon? I was in no hurry to see the canyon. I figured it would be there for me later.” When the family arrived, Jared gazed at “the massive temples of the canyon.” His first thought was, “It looks like a painting.” He was impressed by the beauty and majesty of the surroundings. “But after seeing the canyon from several different vantage points, I was ready to leave. Although the canyon was magnificent, I felt that I was not part of it—and without being part of it, it seemed little more than a giant hole in the ground.” But the vacation was young, and the know-it-all state of mind penetrable. After the Grand Canyon, his family drove to smaller Walnut Canyon National Monument, near Flagstaff, Arizona. Jared assumed that Walnut Canyon would be similar to the Grand Canyon, “interesting to look at, but nothing to hold my attention.”

Nine hundred years ago, the Sinagua people built their homes under cliff overhangs. Twenty miles long, four hundred feet deep and a quarter mile wide, the canyon is populated with soaring turkey vultures, as well as elk and javelina. Life zones overlap, mixing species that usually live apart; cacti grow beside mountain firs. Jared described details of the path they walked, how the bushes were low and straggly and looked as though they had been there for many years, and the shape of the tall green pines across the gap. “As we followed the path down into the canyon, the skies grew suddenly dark. It began raining and the rain quickly turned to sleet,” Jared wrote. “We found shelter in one of the ancient Indian caves. Lightning lit up the canyon and the sound of thunder reverberated in the cave. As we stood waiting for the storm to end, my family and I talked about the Indians who once lived here. We discussed how they cooked in the caves, slept in the caves, and found shelter in the caves—just as we were doing.” He looked out across the canyon through the haze of rain. “I finally felt that I was a part of nature.” The context of his life shifted. He was immersed in living history, witnessing natural events beyond his control, keenly aware of it all. He was alive.

Surely such moments are more than pleasant memories. The young don’t demand dramatic adventures or vacations in Africa. They need only a taste, a sight, a sound, a touch—or, as in Jared’s case, a lightning strike—to reconnect with that receding world of the senses.

The know-it-all state of mind is, in fact, quite vulnerable. In a flash, it burns, and something essential emerges from its ashes.

6. The “Eighth Intelligence”

BEN FRANKLIN LIVED a block from Boston Harbor when he was a boy. In 1715, when Ben was nine, his eldest brother was lost at sea, but Ben was not deterred. “Living near the water, I was much in and about it, learned early to swim well, and to manage boats, and when in a boat or canoe with other boys I was commonly allowed to govern, especially in any case of difficulty,” he wrote later.

This love of water and his bent toward mechanics and invention merged and led to one of his earliest experiments.

One windy day, Ben was flying a kite from the bank of the Mill Pond, a holding area for water from high tide. In a warm wind, Ben tied the kite to a stake, threw off his clothes and dove in.

“The water was pleasantly cool, and he was reluctant to leave it, but he wanted to fly his kite some more,” biographer H. W. Brands writes. “He pondered his dilemma until it occurred to him that he need not forgo one diversion for the other.” Climbing out of the pond, Ben untied the kite and returned to the cool water. “As the buoyancy of the water diminished gravity’s hold on his feet, he felt the kite tugging him forward. He surrendered to the wind’s power, lying on his back and letting the kite pull him clear across the pond without the least fatigue and with the greatest pleasure imaginable.”

He applied a scientist’s mind to the lessons of the senses, and used his direct experience with nature to solve a problem. Today, of course, we have moved much scientific experimentation to the electronic ether. But surely the foundation of such experimentation remains the kind of direct experience that Ben enjoyed as he surrendered to the wind’s power.

Nature Smart: Paying Attention

Howard Gardner, a professor of education at Harvard University, developed his influential theory of multiple intelligences in 1983. Gardner argued that the traditional notion of intelligence, based on I.Q. testing, was far too limited; he instead proposed seven types of intelligences to account for a broader range of human potential in children and adults. These included: linguistic intelligence (“word smart”); logical-mathematical intelligence (“number/reasoning smart”); spatial intelligence (“picture smart”); bodily-kinesthetic intelligence (“body smart”); musical intelligence (“music smart”); interpersonal intelligence (“people smart”); and intrapersonal intelligence (“self smart”).

More recently, he added an eighth intelligence: naturalist intelligence (“nature smart”). Charles Darwin, John Muir,